Under the Valve Cover... how's it lookin'?

[TiGeo]

Bottom end to the extent you could see it during a timing chain tensioner repair around the same time as the PCV picture above.

 

[KrisZ]

No oil is going to clean that engine, waste of money, time and good oil trying to chase that monkey.

I would run a dedicated engine cleaner and probably do a piston soak with some good solvent, like mopar combustion chamber cleaner or similar.

If the above helps, great, if it doesn’t just keep driving and topping up the oil. The engine will most likely go a lot longer like that.

 

[OVERKILL]

@FCD I've owned it for the last 7 years. Since about 160k.

If you zoom in, hopefully not too much quality was lost, but there are a couple little hot spots on the cam lobes and scoring. Though nothing was feelable. Car does consume oil (1500mi) and has blowby. I'm the second owner. So I believe the car wasn't as well maintained in it's early years, never had overheated in my ownership and runs pretty good all things considered.

So, oils aren't cleaners, so it's not surprising that switching to Mobil 1 didn't clean-up 160,000 miles of abuse. Their purpose is to keep things clean and once that's no longer taking place, well, this is what that looks like. Once this material is able to plate-out and adhere itself to the surfaces it takes either a solvent or something with high polarity or solvency to remove it.

Mobil has previously claimed that their FS Euro 0W-40 can clean, but I don't believe they make that claim anymore. I experienced it doing just that, but that was back during the period in which the claim was still current.

HPL's oils can clean, this is due to the base oil blend they use, which leverages esters and AN's to perform that function. It's a slow clean, but that's what you'd want when cleaning up varnish, lacquer and carbonaceous grit.

If you intend on using the HPL Engine Cleaner product (probably the most cost effective) I'd personally be inclined to use it with M1 FS 0W-40. You'll want to short change the filter, probably the first one after 1,000 miles and see what it looks like. This will allow you to determine how long you can safely run a filter for with this combo.

 

[OVERKILL]

Does the crimson colour indicate heat wear due to inadequate lubrication?

No, it's just lacquer, which is like a heavier, more contaminated varnish.